User Guide

Chapter 13: CoreMIDI and Apple DLS Synth
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Apple DLS Synth and a Controller Keyboard
If you have a small MIDI controller keyboard, but you do not have any external MIDI
Synthesizers, Band-in-a-Box can easily support this.
Select the port that your controller is connected to as your MIDI Input, and then select
QT Music Instruments for your output ports. Band-in-a-Box will receive/record from a
keyboard connected to the MIDI interface, but playback and keyboard MIDI Thru will go
to the built-in Mac synth.
Inter-Application Communication with IAC or Virtual Ports
Virtual Ports can be used to “pipe” Band-in-a-Box MIDI playback into most CoreMIDI-
compatible sequencers and other MIDI software. This means that when you play a song
in Band-in-a-Box, the MIDI information will be sent to another application, rather than
directly to a MIDI interface or Apple DLS softsynth.
One reason to do this would be to use a third party application as an Audio Unit or VST
plug-in host. An example of such a program is Rax (http://www.audiofile-
engineering.com/rax/).
With Band-in-a-Box, you can either use the BIAB Virtual Ports or the IAC (Inter-
Application Communication) bus. These are just two different ways of accomplishing
the same thing.
To use the IAC bus, you first need to enable the IAC driver in the Audio MIDI Setup
window (MIDI Devices). Double-click on IAC Driver, make sure “Device is online” is
checked, and add at least one port.
Hint: If Band-in-a-Box is running when you enable the IAC driver, you may need to quit and
re-open the Band-in-a-Box application before it is recognized.
In Band-in-a-Box, go to the CoreMIDI Choose Ports dialog, and select IAC on all
output ports.